Personhood for Nature & Living Things and Nature-Based Economies - a Look Back & Forward in 2025 "A Bellwether Year for the Ocean" with Resilient Earth Hosts Leigh Anne Lindsey (Producer/Editor), Scott & Tree Mercer (Whale & Seal Study)

This episode includes a radio show we recorded a year ago, April 2024, when we talked about the March 28, 2024 Declaration for the Ocean signed by Indigenous leaders of New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Tahiti, Tonga, Hawaii, and Easter Island. This treaty declared whales to be legal persons with inherent rights, including the right to freedom of movement, a healthy environment, and the ability to thrive alongside humanity. Signed by chiefs from the island nations, as well as king of the Māori and president of the High Chiefs of the Cook Islands). The Māori King stated: “Ultimately, this is a declaration for future generations.This partnership will establish a marine recovery plan that will accelerate the recovery of populations of sacred species, from whales to sea lions, dolphins, and manta rays.”

This declaration draws upon the traditions of the Māori worldview and emphasizes the interconnectedness of all living things. Recognizing the urgent threats whales face from unsustainable practices, pollution, and climate change, the declaration outlines a plan for their protection, including establishing marine protected areas and implementing customary restrictions guided by ancestral wisdom. 

Co-Hosts Scott & Tree Mercer have dedicated their lives to ocean awareness & observation, & have run a whale census program for the past 12 years. They report daily findings along the Northern CA coasts of Sonoma & Mendocino counties to places like Cal Academy of Science in San Francisco, the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, the Noyo Center for Marine Science in Fort Bragg, & the LA Chapter of the American Cetacean Society. Tree taught biology for 34 years on Long Island, NY. Scott began researching marine mammals in 1974. He's flown aerial surveys & studied humpback, finback, & North Atlantic right whales, along with co-founding the Briar Island Ocean Study Research Station on Briar Island, Nova Scotia. He led winter expeditions in the British Virgin Islands for humpback whales & coral reef studies, & co-wrote the Great Whale Book.

Ralph Chami, Founder & Director of Blue-Green Future & Rebalance Earth, former Assoc. Dir. of the IMF is also showcased. He inspired us to create & launch this podcast last Sept, 4 years after he was a guest speaker on the Ocean Life Symposium we simulcast on public radio & YouTube. Chami is a financial economist who is helping to create markets around nature that protect nature in perpetuity.

Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:00.462)
you

Resilient Earth Radio. We host speakers from the United States and around the world to talk about critical issues facing our planet and the positive actions people are taking. We also let our listeners learn how they can get involved and make a difference. This awareness could lead to new laws, policies, and procedures to help protect valuable resources and encourage economies around them.

Resilient Earth Radio.

Speaker 2 (00:49.934)
In episode 31, we are going back a year to April, 2024, when my co-hosts and I were talking about the March 28, 2024 Declaration for the Ocean, signed by indigenous leaders in the South Pacific of New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Tahiti, Tonga, Hawaii, and Easter Island. This declared whales to be legal persons with inherent rights

including the right to freedom of movement, a healthy environment, and the ability to thrive alongside humanity. The treaty was signed during a ceremony attended by chiefs from the island nations, as well as King of the Maori, the indigenous of New Zealand, and president of the high chiefs of the Cook Islands. The Maori King stated, ultimately,

This is a declaration for future generations. Our descendants deserve to inherit an ocean teeming with life, where the songs of whales continue to resonate across the vast expanse. This partnership will establish a marine recovery plan that will accelerate the recovery of populations of sacred species, from whales to sea lions, dolphins,

and manta rays. The declaration was spearheaded by a conservation group, the Hine Moana Halo Ocean Initiative.

Speaker 2 (02:29.144)
Hinemoana Halo Ocean Initiative will promote self-determination, help the Māori to protect, care, manage, and monitor the coastal waters and high seas in partnership with local communities using both traditional approaches and current science. This declaration draws upon the traditions of the Māori worldview.

and emphasizes the interconnectedness of all living things. Recognizing the urgent threats whales face from unsustainable practices, pollution and climate change, the declaration outlines a plan for their protection, including establishing marine protected areas and implementing customary restrictions guided by ancestral wisdom.

Scott and Tree, which is short for Teresa, have dedicated their lives to ocean awareness and observation. Currently, they report daily findings along our portion of the Northern California coast to places like Cal Academy of Science in San Francisco, the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, the Noyo Center for Marine Science in Fort Bragg, and down in Southern California to the Los Angeles Chapter...

of the American Cetacean Society. Teresa taught biology for 34 years to grade schoolers on Long Island, and Scott began researching marine mammals in 1974, over 50 years ago. He's flown aerial surveys and studied humpback, finback, and North Atlantic right whales, along with co-founding the Briar Island Ocean Study Research Station

on Briar Island, Nova Scotia. He led winter expeditions in the British Virgin Islands for humpback whales and coral reef studies and co-wrote the Great Whale Book.

Speaker 2 (04:41.666)
They live full time now on the South Mendocino Coast of California, where they track whale migration and other sea life activity from land along the Mendocino and Sonoma coast. They speak and do presentations at conferences and at small public locations like the Point Arena Lighthouse.

We also make reference in this episode to Ralph Chami, founder and director of Blue Green Future and former associate director of the U.S. International Monetary Fund or IMF. And it was Ralph who inspired us to create this podcast and launch it last September, four years after he was a guest speaker in 2020 on the Ocean Life Symposium that Scott and Tree founded.

the year prior in which we simulcast during the pandemic worldwide on both public radio and YouTube. Chami is a financial economist who is helping to create markets around nature that protect nature in perpetuity. To have a market, he says we need to have demand and supply. And he asks,

So where does the demand and where does the supply come from of ecosystem services? He answers that by saying, it starts with the predicament that we are in right now, which is self-inflicted. We all know about climate change.

Speaker 2 (06:24.342)
And during our Ocean Life Symposium, it was his comment that it's not all doom and gloom that made us sit up and lean in to listen more acutely. He talked about valuing natural capital and designing both tools and policies to secure a future that is both environmentally and economically sustainable. And that is what he later began doing at Blue Green Future.

where they are creating those mechanisms for the markets to align around the protection of the whales along with other species like elephants and nature-based plants like mangroves and seagrass, which provide so much of the oxygen we breathe.

He points out that there is a very serious risk to nature itself and the loss of its biodiversity that are interlinked through human activity, self-inflicted harm. But as he continues to reason, in every predicament, there's always an opportunity to fix things and rise to the occasion if we were to recognize it as such.

And he continues by saying, so let's see how we can not only reduce the risks, but actually marshal a new day where nature and people are at the center. And in late March, 2024, there he was in New Zealand with the indigenous leaders as they signed the declaration granting whales, dolphins, and other marine life legal personhood. And that

Declaration covers 2.2 million kilometers of ocean, about 1.4 million miles. And in the next hour, you'll hear Scott say that granting personhood to animals other than humans is not really new. We've been granting personhood to rivers and parts of the ocean for a while now. It just means that we give the same amount of protection as humans have.

Speaker 2 (08:47.438)
to these living and non-living things that we depend on, again, for our oxygen. And that life has depended on for billions of years, Scott points out. And he said, so to be using it as a dump and destructive extrication purposes is just wrong. Not only is it wrong, it's actually criminal.

Speaker 2 (09:15.842)
That's the idea behind giving more protections and actually enforcing them. You'll find out about that and more in this episode that the three of us recorded a year ago on public radio after we'd read the news about the declaration for the ocean from those indigenous leaders in the South Pacific. We also bring up Zach Cliver, who was then with Gotham Whale in New York. And now Zach.

is working with Ralph Chamey. And he also helped set up another interview with Ralph for us and with us on Earth Day, April 22 this year, right after we attend the Goldman Environmental Awards at the San Francisco Opera House. And that's another thing we'll be reporting on as well. Thanks for listening and thanks for supporting us through PayPal. We appreciate.

whatever you can contribute as it helps us to continue bringing these great stories and comments to everyone around the world.

Speaker 2 (10:25.524)
I'm Leigh Anne Lindsey and my co-host and co-producers are Scott and Tree Mercer of the Mendonoma Whale and Seal Study. And now we'll get into episode 31.

Speaker 2 (10:46.104)
Good morning, my name is Lee Ann Lindsey. Scott and Tree Mercer have been for many years studying whales and Scott began in 1974. That's 50 years ago. Did you know that Scott?

Yeah, well you told me about the nitty gritty dirt band retiring when I started feeling old.

No

Right, they're going to do their last tour. They are on their last tour right now, the Nitty-Gritty dirt band. Scott, 50 years ago, began researching marine mammals. He studied humpback, finback, and North Atlantic right whales, mini whales. He's flown aerial surveys. He co-founded the Briar Island Ocean Study Research Station on Briar Island, Nova Scotia. He led winter expeditions in the British Virgin Islands for humpback whales.

and coral reef studies and the list just goes on. And Shree, you retired from teaching 34 years of biology to seventh through twelfth graders, right? That is correct. And that was back in 2013. Was that the first year that you guys came to do winters here on the Northern California coast? it was our first winter. year.

Speaker 4 (11:55.438)
2014

and now they live here full time and they study and track whale migration and sea life and you contribute data and observations to a lot of other ocean data gathering organizations. Can you name a couple of those?

Yes, we do.

for Cal Academy of Science in San Francisco, the Marine Mammal Center, which is located in Sausalito, the Noyo Center for Marine Science up in Fort Bragg. Down in Southern California, there is the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Cetacean Society. They have been running a whale census program for 40 years, and probably the longest running in the world.

and we modeled our whale census program after theirs.

Speaker 2 (12:52.826)
and she sent me an email that really caught my attention that is news that I wanted to share here on air today with the two of them so we can discuss it and break it down and also talk about Ralph Chami. He gives Ted Talks. He talks with the United Nations. He co-founded Blue Green Future and what is Blue Green Future? But they are thought leaders in valuing natural capital.

and in designing both tools and policies to secure a future that is both environmentally and economically sustainable. And they are creating those mechanisms for the markets to align around the protection of the whales, along with other species like elephants and nature-based plants like mangroves and seagrass. So the news that you shared with me, Tree, and we can discuss this now a little bit further.

but it was about the indigenous people there in New Zealand who together signed a declaration granting Wales legal personhood. Do you both want to talk about this for a little bit and what impact that means for our planet? Sure. And it's going to cover 2.2 million kilometers, which is about 1.4 million miles of ocean. That's right. Right. Right. So Scott.

protected now.

Why don't you tell us a little bit why this is so important?

Speaker 3 (14:20.812)
You know, granting personhood to animals other than human is not really new. It was the last several years. I know some people really sat up when they heard that. But the idea is that also granting personhood to rivers, parts of the ocean, it just means giving the same amount of protection to these living but non-living things that we depend on and giving them that kind of protection that we give to human beings to these

Bye.

Speaker 3 (14:50.806)
Physical forms of the earth that we depend so much on, like rivers that go by and obviously the oceans, not only provide us with so much oxygen, life has depended on the oceans for billions of years. So to be using it as a dump and so forth is just absolutely ridiculous. It's actually criminal, and that's the idea behind giving more protections and actually enforcing them than we're doing right now.

Yes, that whole concept, we all became aware of more when...

the first time that we did the Ocean Life Symposium, the first year of the pandemic, 2020. And we had Ralph Chami as one of the speakers. Thank you very much for bringing him in. And he was the first one that was pointing out the value of whales to us in a way that I hadn't really thought of before. And he continues to do so. But he was talking about back then personhood of rivers and helping New Zealand and other countries build an economy.

me around nature, but why whales are so important to protect and why this is such a significant step forward because it is their poop, as he will say many times, that feeds the surface of the waters that feeds the phytoplankton, which feeds the krill, which then feeds them again, and also other sea life that feeds on krill, but the phytoplankton provides over 50 % of the oxygen on this planet.

And when you hear things like that, and then you hear how much carbon that they sequester over their lifetime, more than 2,000 trees, you you think the value of that is so much more than what they've been hunted down for. And they are addressing that about how to replace those kinds of economies with something else to protect those whales because they provide such value.

Speaker 2 (16:54.23)
So that is something that ties right in to what you were saying, Scott. This is what he has been doing.

and if nature could speak, if humans could listen. And this is a TEDx talk. And then we can talk about it on the other side too.

I'm a financial economist and I'm trying to create markets around nature that protect nature in perpetuity. But to have a market, we need to have demand and supply. So where does the demand and where does supply come from of ecosystem services? It starts with the predicament that we are in right now, which is self-inflicted. We all know about climate change, but that's a risk that we are facing. That's why mostly we're here.

But also there's another risk that is materializing right next to it, which is the risk to nature itself and the loss of its biodiversity. These two risks are interlinked through human activity. So in a sense, this is a self-inflicted wound. Now in every predicament, there's always an opportunity to fix things and rise to the occasion if we were to recognize it as such. So let's see how we can not only reduce the two risks, but actually

marshal a new day where nature and people are center. Let me make the case. So the people that work on climate change, say, well, in order to reduce the risk of climate change, we need to reduce and or end of said carbon dioxide emissions. Those that work on natural capital, they want to protect the nature. They want to invest in nature. They want to restore it, rejuvenate it.

Speaker 1 (18:39.81)
The thing is that we can't work on one risk and then tackle the other. We have to do both at the same time because we're running out of time. So how do we do the two? How do we tackle both problems at the same time? That is the proposition for you and that's what I'm going to show you. All right, turns out that the question is right in front of our face. The question and the answer. So here we go. Here's the solution. All right, if we were to invest in nature, da-da.

That's, some of us call it nature-based solutions. Invest in nature, meaning protect it, restore it, rejuvenate it. We would, by definition, reduce the risk to nature and its biodiversity. But the scientists tell us, and this is the latest IPCC report, says if we were to do so, then nature would help us fight climate change by a minimum of 38%. That's the latest IPCC report. So we have the solution.

We go through nature. We reduce the risk to nature. I'm talking about here a regenerative nature, protecting nature for itself. And nature would turn around and help us reduce climate change. But notice what I used there. I said invest in nature. I did not say philanthropic giving to nature, because we already give a lot of money, some of us, to protect nature. But that money is not enough. That's why we always talk about the financing gap.

That gap has to be filled by something else over and above philanthropy and altruism and nature for itself.

Thanks for listening to Resilient Earth Radio and Podcast. Now, back to our show.

Speaker 2 (20:27.8)
there were a lot of things that he said there tree. And one of them was about biodiversity. And let's just break that first down in one little sentence here. It refers to the variety of life on earth at all its levels from genes to ecosystems and can encompass the evolutionary, ecological and cultural process that sustains life. That's the key to all of this.

Yes, bio means life and diversity means the different forms of life. And the greater the degree of biodiversity, generally the healthier that ecosystem is and the greater chance it has to survive and to adapt to all the changes that especially our species seem to impose upon it. I had a gigantic poster in my classroom that said, had the word biodiversity

on it and it was the real world wide web, know when websites started to become so popular but I tried to, I loved that poster, I wanted to take it with me when I retired and I made sure that the students looked at that every day and they understood the importance of biodiversity.

And the interconnectedness to it. Absolutely. Right? And whale personhood. This announcement is momentous because the document calls for a radical shift in the way we view whales, recognizing them as legal persons and then outlining a comprehensive plan for their protection. Because whales do provide so much value towards sustaining our planet.

as do many other species like elephants and then plants like seagrass and mangroves. So did you want to talk a little bit more about that Scott? How they're going to maybe implement this and what this will mean for maybe others who might be encouraged to do something similar.

Speaker 3 (22:29.516)
Yeah, I think implementing it's going to be the real work, explaining it to people and why it's necessary.

Speaker 2 (22:42.326)
And before we proceed forward, I'd like to let our listeners know that coming up, Scott is going to be talking about a previous administration. And because this was recorded over a year ago in 2024, at the end of March and into April, live on public radio, and that's when the Declaration for the Ocean was signed by the Indigenous leaders.

in the South Pacific Islands of New Zealand, Cook Islands, Hawaii, Tonga, Easter Island and others, that this particular reference to the previous administration is talking about the first time that Trump was in office. So that's very important that you get that as we continue to hear what he has to say about that.

Speaker 2 (23:38.872)
Thanks for listening to Resilient Earth Radio and Podcast.

Speaker 3 (23:50.934)
The previous administration announced that one of their selling points for Elect Us is we're going to do away with regulations. We don't need them. The previous president even announced on TV that we didn't need all this clean water and clean air.

Who needs to clean air and clean water?

to breathe. And he was saying you're to have the cleanest, clearest water you've ever seen. And one of his first acts as president was to get a bunch of people from a certain industry lined up behind him all smiling with their hard hats on. And he signed a regulation allowing them to dump waste into rivers and streams. That was more like an in your face people, you know. So that's why rivers and streams need to be protected. And then we wonder why we have all these pesticides in our pesticides and chemicals.

Right.

Speaker 3 (24:37.776)
in our systems and where some of these unusual diseases that haven't been seen before, hardly ever been seen, come from. So that's the idea. A friend of ours emailed and thanked me for forwarding that Maori thing last night and said how sad it felt that we have to grant personhood to protect things that are so important. So I was explaining to her little bit what I just said.

This is really a groundbreaking thing that they're doing. And yeah, it's sad that we have to do this, but as I was alluding to earlier, just learning about that cycle of the whales excrement feeding the phytoplankton that produces over 50 % of our oxygen on this planet and sequestering, you know, with their bodies and with the whale poop and other things, the carbon in the atmosphere that we humans have created,

These are ways that we can use the tools provided here and make an economy around nature so that we continue to thrive and survive. That's right. What's another question? It would be, what is ecological? And that's related to or concerned with the relation of living organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings. That's what we're talking about.

And what is mitigation? The action of reducing the severity, seriousness, and painfulness of something. So we're mitigating through these kinds of actions.

Yeah. One of Ralph's points is that we need to switch from being an extractive economy, extractive societies, and putting back into the environment, not just constantly taking out, so we become more inclusive instead of just extractive all the time. And if you think about it, that's what we do. We extract. We extract our natural resources, we're going to living things. But in the case of, see, the African forest elephants that are

Speaker 3 (26:34.64)
getting some attention now thanks to blue-green. That group of elephants has been, due to their tusks, bodies are left there in the jungle or the forest are rot, and they live there in that area, so they and their future generations, their children, are losing the elephants that they're relying on in ways that they don't even realize because the elephants are keeping the forest healthy.

and what they do is walk through the area, as think Ralph was explaining on one of the little blips we just had there. As they go through the forest, they, it sounds counterintuitive, but they trample on the smaller, younger trees, and not all of them, but as they walk through, and they pulse them up and they feed on them, and that bends out the forest in a way so that other trees grow quicker and faster.

Forest Management by the Elephants.

the elephant gen, as Ralph says in many of his talks, if we let them play and frolic around in the forest and do what they do, we'll have a healthier forest. The people who live there will have a healthier environment and more biodiversity and crops that they, natural things that they extract from the environment. It'll be more of it and a cleaner environment for them. But also if ecotourism, by starting a tourism business in the area, they employ local

people and they have more ways to support their children and families and the elephants are there the next day to see again. That's the argument we used to give with whale watching. We go back home, tie the boat up for the night, the whale's still out there, nobody killed it. They'd be there tomorrow, take another, some more people to come out and appreciate.

Speaker 2 (28:10.496)
thus building an economy around nature. Nature-based economy. Ralph Chami has been leading the charge on this message for years now. Then he came on our show, The Ocean Life Symposium, and it was really eye-opening to hear that message. And he's now been working with several countries and governments to help them understand, as someone who worked with the International Monetary Fund, he understands this kind of

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:40.158)
How do you build an economy around something like nature? How do you build an economy around whales? How do you build an economy around elephants that doesn't destroy them, but it helps to save our planet from climate change? And these are just simple, but yet really profound changes in our way of thinking. And if we can get the message out further, and this is what Blue Green Future and Rebalance Earth is helping to do.

they are helping to then bring about a better tomorrow. My name is Leigh Anne Lindsey, your host today, along with Scott and Tree Mercer of Mendonoma Whale and Seal Study, and we're talking about Ralph Chami, who is a former director, assistant director of the International Monetary Fund, who co-found the Blue-Green Future and Rebalance Earth. And we're going to listen to him just a little bit more when he talks about how to invest in nature.

Speaker 1 (29:47.562)
Is nature investable? The answer is yes. So how do you invest in nature? First of all, where is the demand coming from? Well, guess what? From the Kyoto protocols, and then we have the Paris Accord, there are commitments to go carbon negative, carbon neutral, carbon zero, by a certain date. Let's say 2050. That was predicated on us taking action at that point in time.

But as Greta said, all we did was blah, blah, And suddenly, they moved fast, and now 2040. And we continued to talk and do high fives, and now it's 2030. What this is really saying is there's a dire need to deal with the climate risk through offsetting, through reducing our carbon emissions. That is creating the demand for carbon.

And that's why the price of carbon, you were to Google it today on the EU ETS, it's over $100. My own institution, the IMF, says the price ought to be a minimum of $78. Predictions are the price of carbon, ton of carbon, is going to be in the hundreds in the next few years. So we already have the demand. What we need is to unleash the supply. Supply of what? Supply of what my colleague here, Dina, calls the work of EarthTech, of Earth.

of nature to absorb all that carbon. So let's see. Is nature investable? All right. This is work we're doing with the father of blue carbon, Professor Carlos Duarte. Carlos asked me to value the carbon sequestration services of seagrass globally. Imagine. So he has the data, and I'm a professional financial economist. So we did the exercise. And guess what? The value of seagrass

is a minimum of $2 trillion. This is not shadow price. This is a market price, meaning this is something you can go to the market and trade it, not the seagrass, the carbon sequestration of the seagrass. But by the way, seagrass does a lot of other things. It's a great defense against flooding. And when you have healthy seagrass, you also have healthy fish stock. So there's a food security aspect to this. Coral reefs, they don't capture carbon on net.

Speaker 1 (32:04.174)
But they do a lot of other things that are incredibly important for the life of the ocean. And the IPCC guys have estimated that the revenue from coral reefs through tourism and fish stocks and so forth is at least $36 billion a year. So this is work we did in 2019. I was hanging out with a bunch of scientists, and they were telling me how the whales capture carbon on their body and indirectly through their fertilization of phytoplankton.

And I asked them the question, has anyone ever thought of paying that whale for that work? And they looked at me, why would you want to do that? I said, because the whale is working for free, protecting us. What if she could talk? What is the salary that she would ask us to pay? That's how much. OK? And that's a moderate amount. She would say, pay me $3 million for grabbing all that carbon on your behalf. This is the orphan. This is the deep ocean that belongs to nobody. Beyond the 200 mile.

zone of every country lies the deep ocean. And that deep ocean has been grabbing carbon since the beginning of time. It has grabbed, since we collected data since 1870, 500 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent is sitting between 1,000 meters and all the way to the bottom. As long as we don't dredge it, as long as you don't mine it, that's a gift of the ocean to each one of us in this room. This is our bequest of $30 trillion. Anyway.

It turns out that a 2019 paper by Fabio Berzaghi documented that elephants enhance carbon sequestration in the forest by at least between 7 and 14%. That's a Nature article. And he called me from Paris and said, can you value their services? So I thought, well, if the elephant could speak, how much money would she ask for her services? Well, $2.6 million. That's the value of just in carbon sequestration of an elephant.

Elephants are poached, killed, and their tusk is sold for a mere $30,000. So what I'm telling you right now is biodiversity, biodiversity of a living and thriving nature is incredibly valuable to us. It's not only flora, it's flora and fauna interacting with each other, creating this beautiful web of life that sustains us and sustains our economies.

Speaker 2 (34:21.694)
Entry that web of life is something that you were just talking about that you used to teach your students He assigns value

People should keep in mind that penicillin is a mold that we spray with Lysol. Well, think of what penicillin has done for many people who are listening now and will do in the future.

you can see why.

someone from the International Monetary Fund who had that background, Ralph Chami, who we're talking about here, who was just giving the keynote at this United Nations event, and it was entitled, The Value of a Living Ocean to our Health and Economic Well-being, and this was a year ago. That was a keynote outlining the need for this paradigm shift to a nature-centric economy, offering tangible ways to value the

immense ecosystem services and that word keeps coming up, services. The services of whales, the services of elephants, the services of seagrass and benefits a living and healthy ocean offers to society. This Oceanic and Climate Summit was a day-long event that took place in Egypt. It was called COP27 and the summit immersed global stakeholders, which we are all stakeholders.

Speaker 2 (35:41.45)
in the importance and potential of the ocean within the climate change narrative and supported multi-stakeholder action for the ocean and all its sustains. And that reminds me, Scott and Tree, of how he said, it's not all doom and gloom. There are things that we can do.

Absolutely. I think I had an earlier estimate by Ralph Chami about the elephant. I just learned by watching that clip, Scott said I think he's reworked those numbers. That was something new to me. Me too. But I realized that this is a skill that Ralph has. He's an economist. A little background on how he really got interested in this. In 2017, he and his family were on a trip to Baja on a boat.

and a blue whale came up close to the boat and he was so moved by the sight of this beautiful blue whale and he looked at her and it was just a moment that he had many of us have I would call it a life-changing experience and he looked at her and he said where have you been all my life and he imagines that she looked at him and said where have you been all of my life

And he said, you know, it moved him to tears. He moved away from the hosts on the ship because he didn't want them to see that he got emotional about it. But this moved him to load up his software and he started to crunch the numbers over and over until he can say with confidence that the whale would pay dividends with every breath that she took and every calf that she bore.

So he had a way to do it. He knows the equations, the software, and that's when he came up with that, actual value. So he concluded that Whale's value to humanity on the basis of emissions she helped to sequester over her 60-year lifetime was $2 million. And did you say it went up to $3 million?

Speaker 2 (37:51.965)
yeah, saw in that presentation it said three million.

The growth of whale watching and ecotourism based around whales. When he figured that into the value to fisheries, to health of the oceans, I'm trying to remember what he categorized.

Right. Because there's several different ways to add that value.

And then being economists, they divided it by the estimated number of whales that survived all the killing we've done and came up with this number that each whale is worth.

Incredible.

Speaker 2 (38:21.612)
And there's a lot of ways to protect whales too, from ship strikes, from being hunted, from entanglement with nets, things like that.

Absolutely. He broke down the elephants, what they should be paid for their services. I love this. He said they...

should be paid about $30,000 a year, each elephant, and comes down to $80 a day for their services. And it's just amazing that he was able to look at this problem and come up with these solutions with these types of numbers. I've also read that he has been criticized because people look at it and say, can't put a price tag on the value of these beautiful animals.

appreciate them for what they are. But here's his response to this. This really struck me. He said, people are telling me that nature should not have a price tag on it. But the truth is that it already has one. The current system values nature at a price of zero. And that's why it is dying. I feel this is so true.

That is so true.

Speaker 4 (39:36.952)
Yeah, and this is a big paradigm shift, you know, for our society, but I so believe that it's necessary if we're not, if we can stop nature from dying, which is going to come back to saving our own existence on this planet.

I was impressed with another number that he had presented there at the United Nations, the value of carbon sequestration services of the open ocean itself. Thirty trillion dollars. Thirty trillion. This is helpful in assigning value to these things because then you can enact laws to protect these things.

Just imagine getting more and more protection around the planet, what that is going to help contribute towards diminishing the effects of our emissions, like you were saying. These are tools that we can use. Let's go to whales specifically, Scott, since you've got such a background in studying for the past 50 years.

Yeah, I was thinking the other day about how much have we actually learned about whales. You know, so much to know. In terms of local economies, I did lead whale watching on a small island in the Caribbean and brought people to the islands. In terms of what Ralph is talking about with nature-based economy, I worked with a company called Seafarers and we took people around where people actually flew in to where we were. I I'm aware of the emissions. We were aware of that too, but

That's the system gives us. Most people are going to row to the Caribbean. But we're making hopefully some advances toward more bio-economic transportation. But I've had people say that about flying places. And we're aware of that, but that's what the system gives us. That's what the economy gives us, jets and fuel. So anyway, we go into an area like Tortola that I worked out of for several winters. And we bring people in. We'd stay in a hotel. We get three meals a day.

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a caterer to business there on the island. They brought our lunches down. These were whales that spend their half the year off New England and they winter in the Caribbean to mate and calve. These are humpback whales. And this is when they do most of their singing too. So we had hydrophones we put over the side of the boat.

So anyway, and then people went out in the evening. We didn't entertain them all night. Just after they had dinner at the hotel, they would go off into the beautiful town of Tortola. Sometimes they'd go in restaurant and get another meal. The economy was really bolstered by all 15 people in a week. We do this for a month. I just think people think you're in the Caribbean for a month in February. Yes, we were. And we do that for several winters. And we actually ran out of customers from our local basin.

England. We'd mark it all summer. And we did the same on a tiny island in the Bay of Fundy up in Canada in the summer. A friend and I started a whale wash business up in Briar Island, Nova Scotia. And the same people had big houses with just two people living in it. Kids had gone off somewhere. And they turned them into bed and breakfast for the whale washes we were bringing in from outside.

So you're creating a

I've seen it first, it really occurred to me, but suddenly these resources needed to be there and used. People who were cod fishing off the island, commercial fishers who said they want to be called fishermen. She's famous from the perfect storm, sadly people don't read anymore or have even seen the movie. And also at that time there was no town dump on this tiny island, so guess where they threw stuff? There was a spot where they'd back their pickups on a high cliff in a polite way. My friend Carl Haycock, who still lives on the

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island, you get them to change all that on a barge and take the trash away to a regular landfill and not dump it in the ocean.

That's one of the ways that we can make some corrections. And that's why we wanted to start this series of radio shows and podcasts to bring more attention to this. And you guys have so much access to experts here in the country and around the world, like Ralph Chami. So I want to play one last little clip from what he was talking about at this United Nations. Biodiversity is valuable.

So what I'm really defining is a new source of wealth. This is something all the islands, for example, the Bahamas just make an announcement yesterday by their prime minister that they're sitting on 25 % of the seagrass I showed you. If the seagrass is worth $2 trillion, can you imagine what Bahamas is sitting on right now? They're probably the richest country now per capita on this planet. But science tells us nature, living and thriving nature, is incredibly important.

People like me come and market value the services of nature. But is that enough to create a market? And the answer is no. We need a third pillar, and that is who can speak on behalf of nature? Who has the right to speak on behalf of nature? In the case of the seagrass of the Bahamas, it would be the government. In case of the elephants, we'd have to see, in case of the whales, who has the right to contract around the services of nature? Once you resolve these three,

then you can keep going. since we're talking about the oceans, I just wanted to come back and say the sustainable way to deal with our ocean is to think of our ocean as a living system, just like you and me. It exists for itself. It's just that it does other things that are of value to us. So even if it did nothing for us, it has the right to exist because it's a living system.

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That is Ralph Chami who's speaking on climate change at the United Nations and the title of that was the value of a living ocean to our health and economic well-being.

those clips, everything you...

selected to share with our audience. It was perfect. And I would encourage people, if you want more information, it's easy to find these YouTube, with Ralph speaking this way. We're actually thinking of maybe getting like a West Coast chapter of Blue Green Future through podcasts and radio shows and maybe giving more talks up and down our coasts we really feel this is important for

everyone's survival.

and talking and presentations are what these two do quite well. They are so well known for their study of the oceans of whales. You can catch them out on the cliffs by the Point Arena Lighthouse and other locations up and down the coast. That's Mendenoma Whale and Seal Study. I'm Leanne Lindsay. It's not all doom and gloom. We have ways that we can work towards building a better future together. It's true.

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Our friends at the Noyo Center for Marine Science in Fort Bragg, doesn't matter if you're local, they're going to be featuring rich riales from Washington State and Zach Kleiber from Bangor, Maine on their monthly science talk. And they also have footage of ropeless fishing gear working. So you can extract crabs and lobsters and other marine life without ropes for them to get entangled in.

That's excellent and that's a great way to end the show today. Thank you Scott and Tree Mercer. Thank you Leigh Anne.

(Voiceover by Leigh Anne conclusion) And I will conclude with this article from February 4th, 2025 from World Resources Institute, Why 2025 is a Critical Year for the Ocean, written by Tom Pickerel. The ocean's alarm bells are ringing and there are six opportunities for ocean progress in 2025.

Sea surface temperatures are at record highs due to climate change. Marine pollution is pervasive and ecosystem decline and biodiversity loss are rife. With just five years left to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the target to conserve and sustainably use the oceans has seen slow progress.

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and receive the least funding of all the SDGs. All this stands in the way of building a sustainable ocean economy that supports people's needs and protects the ocean. But at the same time, our ocean challenges and commitments are coming to a head. Over the past decade, the world made a number of important international ocean agreements and treaties that require swift implementation this year.

to ensure they are effective. That's why 2025 is a bellwether year for the ocean. It's one of deadlines and milestones. It brings both the pressure and the potential to be transformative for ocean governance, conservation, and sustainable development. With a pat calendar of high-profile events, critical milestones, and major international agreements in the making,

the ocean will finally take center stage. And here are those six opportunities for ocean progress in 2025. Number one, protecting the high seas. The UN's agreement on biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction known as the High Seas Treaty seeks to conserve and sustainably use marine resources

in the 61 % of the ocean that lies outside of national jurisdiction, an enormous area lacking comprehensive protections. Current international agreements such as the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea impose responsibilities on states to protect nature.

but only within their national boundaries. This leaves a significant governance gap of approximately 104 million square miles, or 43 % of the Earth's surface. After nearly two decades of discussion, including the five years of negotiations, the treaty was adopted in 2023. With 106 signatories and 15 ratifications already,

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The pressure is on to secure the 60 ratifications needed with hopes that this can be achieved by the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France this June 2025. Number two, tackling harmful fisheries subsidies. In June 2022, the World Trade Organization, WTO, achieved a milestone by adopting the agreement on fisheries subsidies.

This initial agreement addresses the most harmful subsidies, which are government payments that contribute to illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, overfished stocks, and fishing on unregulated high seas. For the agreement to take effect, it requires formal acceptance from two-thirds

of WTO members. That's 111 countries. As of early 2025, 89 members had ratified it, leaving 22 more to reach the threshold. Negotiations will also continue on FISH 2 of the agreement, which targets broader subsidy reforms, including capacity enhancing activities like vessel construction and fuel subsidies.

Addressing concerns of developing countries will be critical to ensuring the agreement balances sustainability goals with development needs and that it achieves broad buy-in. Number three, efforts to finalize a comprehensive treaty addressing plastic pollution will continue this August 2025 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Between 8 and 10 million metric tons of plastic ends up in the ocean each year, and plastic waste accounts for about 80 % of all marine pollution. The treaty aims to create a legally binding agreement covering the entire life cycle of plastics from production to disposal. The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, INC,

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initially aimed to finalize it by the end of 2024 in Busan, South Korea. And as we know, significant differences among participating nations delayed a final agreement. A high ambition coalition of over 100 countries is advocating for binding commitments to reduce virgin plastic production and eliminate harmful chemicals. However, oil producing nations like

Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China are pushing for a focus on waste management and recycling. Rwanda is proposing for a global target to reduce primary plastic polymer production and phase out harmful chemicals gained traction in 2024, as did Panama's suggestion of mandatory reporting on plastic production. 4. Developing rules for deep sea mining

The International Seabed Authority, ISA, aims to finalize regulations for the commercial exploitation of deep sea minerals. Deep sea mining remains divisive. Its impact is still largely unknown, and many scientists fear it could have grave consequences for marine life and planetary health. Negotiations have failed to reach an agreement so far, but all eyes will be on Kingston, Jamaica in July.

In an earlier episode with Richard Charter, senior fellow of the Ocean Foundation based in Washington DC, and who lives right south of us here on the coast in Bodega Bay, created a film called Defend the Deep that won this year's International Ocean Film Festival's Marine Sciences Award. And they are going to honor and recognize their incredible work and contribution

to ocean conservation during the 22nd International Ocean Film Festival, April 11 through 13, in San Francisco at Fort Mason's Cowell Theater. Number five, delivering the EU Ocean Pact, announced by the European Commission president, is a political initiative to promote sustainable ocean management and ensure the resilience and productivity of marine ecosystems.

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Final number six, our Ocean Conference in Busan, South Korea, April 28th through 30th, 2025 marks the 10th edition of that conference. The One Ocean Science Congress will provide scientific insights into ocean health to guide conservation and sustainable use. The Ocean Rise and Coastal Resilience Coalition Summit will launch a coalition of coastal cities.

and island states to address sea level rise. Finally, the Blue Economy and Finance Forum will spotlight sustainable investment and innovation and foster collaboration to build a resilient ocean economy. That's in Abu Dhabi, October 9th through 15th. It is the IUCN World Conservation Congress that will bring together global experts, leaders, and decision makers

to discuss and address the world's most pressing conservation and sustainability challenges. Held every four years, it is the largest nature conservation gathering in the world. And then in Brazil, it is COP 30, November 10 through 21. COP 30 will be a critical opportunity to integrate the conservation of tropical forests and the ocean, both significant carbon sinks.

into global climate strategies in November. So this is a pivotal year for the ocean. The name of this February 4th 2025 article is Why 2025 is a Critical Year for the Ocean. We will be reporting on the pivotal presentations as to the state of our oceans and marine wildlife.

and keep an eye out for this spring for the update with Ralph Chami of Blue Green Future. Thanks for listening to and supporting us here at Resilient Earth Radio and Podcast.

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Thanks for listening to the Resilient Earth podcast where we talk about critical issues and positive actions for our planet. Resilient Earth is produced by Planet Centric Media, a 501c3 nonprofit and Sea Storm Studios Inc. located on the rugged North Sonoma Coast of Northern California. I'm Leigh Anne Lindsey, producer and host along with co-hosts and co-producers Scott and Tree Mercer of Mendonoma Whale and Seal study located on the south Mendocino and north Sonoma coast.

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The music for this podcast is by Eric Allaman, an international composer, pianist, and writer living in the Sea Ranch. Discover more of his music, animations, ballet, stage, and film work at EricAllaman.com. You can find Resilient Earth on Spotify, Apple, and Amazon podcasts, iHeartRadio, YouTube, SoundCloud,

and wherever you find your podcasts. Please support us by subscribing or donating to our cause.